


Stranger Things Have Happened

by deathishauntedbyhumans



Series: SF Discord Challenges [1]
Category: Sally Face (Video Games)
Genre: Allergies, Blood and Injury, Broken Bones, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hospitals, Implied Polyamorous Relationship(s), Medical Inaccuracies, Multi, The Author Knows Nothing, Wordcount: 1.000-10.000, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 03:01:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20036827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathishauntedbyhumans/pseuds/deathishauntedbyhumans
Summary: Four times the Ghost Gang™ goes to the hospital and one time they... also go to the hospital, but different.





	Stranger Things Have Happened

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the theme _hospital_ for the SF Discord monthly submission. (How I managed to finish this within the time frame, I don’t know.) 
> 
> Title taken from the song of the same name by Random Encounters.

1

“Seriously, I can do this.” Sal batted Larry’s hands away from his waist, shaking his head. “I’ve got it.”

Larry glanced dubiously between Sal and the spot on the wall he was trying to hang the shitty pine needles they were pretending was mistletoe. “Dude, it’s pretty high up.” 

From beside Larry, Ash wrapped her own arms around Larry’s waist and tugged him towards herself and —more importantly— away from Sal. “He’s a big kid,” she said with a grin. She winked up at Sal. His shoulders slumped a little with relief and his ears twitched, indicating that he was probably smiling beneath his prosthetic. “He’s got this.”

Todd, who’d long-since given up on actually decorating the hallway himself in favour of sitting against the wall fiddling with the Super Gearboy, looked up and rolled his eyes behind his glasses. “You’re going to fall,” he warned. 

The chair Sal was standing up wasn’t the _ safest, _per se, but it wasn’t like it was going to crumble beneath his feet. “I’m fine! Would you all stop worrying about me?” He pointed to the box of decorations near Ash and Larry’s feet. “Hand me a couple more pieces, would you?”

The fourth floor hallway of Addison apartments was already looking festive, with lights strung up along the edges of the doorways and around the elevator. At Sal’s prompting, the four of them had taken it upon themselves to fill the complex with holiday cheer, since nobody else around had seemed much inclined to do so. 

Ash relinquished her hold on Larry to bend down and snag another bunch of pine needles. They’d tied them together with red ribbons, and they actually didn’t look half bad. At a distance, they could almost be mistaken for mistletoe.

“Here ya go, Sally Face,” Ash said, handing up the bunch. Sal shot her a thumbs up and turned to put it up, tape held tightly in his other hand. 

As he turned, the chair he was standing on let out an ungodly creaking sound. Larry’s eyes went wide, and even Todd deigned to peek over the Super Gearboy again to see what had happened. 

Still standing atop the chair, Sal tensed, waiting for… absolutely nothing. The chair held firm, and Ash let out a quiet laugh. 

“Oh, god,” she began. “For a second there, I thought it was gonna—“

Before she could finish her thought, the front right leg of the chair splintered with a second horrendous sound, this one more of a crack than a creak. Sal let out a shout as he went down with the chair, falling with a sickening _ thud _down against the floor. 

In the same instant, Larry made a strangled noise and jumped towards the chair. He didn’t reach it before Sal hit the ground, though; Ash had tugged him too far from the scene to be of any use. Instead, he dove to his knees, grabbing at Sal’s head which, miraculously, had managed to avoid landing on the floor with him. 

“Sal!” Ash rushed from the box to Sal’s side, hovering anxiously behind Larry. Todd shoved the Super Gearboy aside and pushed himself up against the wall, his body tensed and poised to either offer assistance or to go find help if the situation required it. 

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Sal pushed at Larry’s hand gently, this time holding onto it instead of batting him aside. Larry let him take it, his features twisted in desperate concern. “I’m… okay.”

“Sal, you’re bleeding!” Ash nudged her way past Larry, kneeling down on Sal’s other side. Sal made a quiet sound of confusion and followed her gaze to his knee, where a gash about the length of one of his fingers had been made in his pants and, consequently, the skin of his thigh. 

“Oh. Shit,” Sal stated eloquently. 

“Fuck, dude, what do we do?” Larry’s wide-eyed gaze slid from Sal to Ash and back again, and Ash started to stand. 

“I can go find a first aid kit?” she offered. Sal shook his head, still staring at the open wound. 

“Hey, Todd?” 

Todd’s entire body twitched a little before he responded. “Yeah?”

Sal pointed vaguely towards the door to his apartment. “Can you go get my dad? I think this is gonna need stitches.”

2

The walkie-talkie crackled to life around four in the morning. 

Sal wasn’t asleep; he’d awoken a few hours prior and hadn’t managed to find rest again. Instead, he’d curled up against the head of the bed with a pillow tucked against his chest and his Super Gearboy in his hands (which, at the moment, was only a Regular Gearboy). 

“Sal?” 

It wasn’t uncommon for one of them to seek out the other in the early hours of the morning. Neither one of them ever got enough sleep to function like normal humans. Larry liked to joke that if somebody squished the two of them together into one person, they might _ just _manage to make the cut. 

“Sally Face, you awake?”

Sal untucked himself from behind his pillow and let it fall to the floor, stretching his legs as he reached for the walkie. 

“I’m up, Larry Face. You okay?”

The reply was instantaneous. “No. I—“ There was a breathy sound that sounded like a groan of pain even through the tinny walkie talkies Sal had bought to replace the ones Todd had taken apart for the Gearboy. Sal frowned as the audio abruptly cut off. 

“Larry?”

“I think I’m dying, Sal,” came nearly a minute later, startling Sal into sitting bolt-upright. His eyes went wide, and he began scrambling to get off the bed, holding the walkie close against his ear so he wouldn’t miss anything Larry was saying. 

“_What?!” _

Larry whined pitifully. “My stomach _ hurts,” _ he moaned out. “My skin feels like it’s on fire and my stomach is killing me and I tried to get up and fell on the floor and I’m so _ dizzy, _Sal—“

“Did you call Lisa?” Sal interrupted, shoving one hand under his bed in a desperate attempt to locate his shoes. Larry whined again, but didn’t actually answer, so Sal took it as a no. “Fuck— Larry, call your mom!”

In a moment of triumph, Sal managed to find a pair of flip-flops and drag them out from beneath the disaster of blankets currently hanging off of his mattress. He shoved them onto his feet, hissing a few curses as he did. 

“I tried,” Larry mumbled. “I can’t make my voice any louder. You know my mom sleeps like the dead.”

Sal _ did _know that. It was a blessing, too, since Larry’s affinity for death metal and lack of his own regular sleep schedule meant that he was often up at all hours of the night listening to Sanity’s Fall screaming their hearts out. 

“I’m gonna come downstairs,” Sal said. He grabbed his mask from his dresser and rushed out the door, careful not to slam anything to avoid waking his father. “Did you just wake up like this?”

“Woke up feeling like shit,” Larry confirmed, voice weak. Sal was already in the elevator. “Stomach felt a little weird earlier. Didn’t think it was a problem.” Sal finished doing up the straps on his prosthetic and then jammed his finger into the basement button a second time. He knew it wouldn’t actually make the elevator reach the bottom floor faster, but it made him feel better to have something to do with his hands. “Now it’s—“ There was a sound like a cough, or a laugh, and then another groan of pain. On his end, Sal winced. “It’s a problem.”

The floors ticked by, much too slowly for Sal’s liking. “I’m coming, Lar, just hang on.”

“I’m hangin’,” Larry replied. “_Urgh.” _

Finally, the digitised _ B _popped up, and the elevator made a dull dinging sound. Sal ducked between the doors as soon as they had slid open enough to allow him to escape the confines, and he all but sprinted to Larry and Lisa’s door. 

“Larry?” he hissed, as soon as he’d thrown it open and rushed inside. A faint answering groan was just barely audible behind Larry’s closed door, and Sal pushed his way into Larry’s room immediately, his eyes wide behind his mask. 

“Hey,” Larry mumbled, voice tight with distress. Sal threw on the light, ignoring Larry’s distinct moan of protestation against the sudden brightness. 

Larry looked… pretty bad. His face was a deep, flushed red, and he was curled up in a ball on the floor amidst the general teenage-boy detritus. His hands were clenched firmly to his stomach, his left leg was tangled in sheets he obviously hadn’t managed to escape from upon his attempt at standing up, and he was wearing a rumpled-looking Sanity’s Fall shirt and a pair of the _ GhostBuster _ boxers Sal had gotten him for the previous Christmas. 

“Man, ‘s too bright,” Larry mumbled. Sal shook his head. 

“I’m gonna wake your mom up, okay?”

Larry raised an arm briefly to wave vaguely towards Lisa’s room, and Sal took that as an _ okay _to proceed. He rushed back out of Larry’s room and towards Lisa’s, knocking a couple of times on the door before trying the handle. It wiggled and turned, so he threw the door open and made his way to Lisa’s bedside. 

“Lisa? _ Lisa_?” Sal hissed. 

Lisa stirred, her bedsheets rustling as she slowly came awake. She blinked in the semi-dark until her gaze focused on the boy gently nudging her shoulder. 

“...Sal?”

“Larry’s feeling really sick and I’m really worried about him and he couldn’t stand up to wake you up so I came down,” Sal said in more of a rush than he’d meant to, as soon as he was sure he had Lisa’s attention. 

Within seconds, Lisa was pushing herself up and out of bed. “Is he still in his room?”

When Sal nodded, Lisa all but pushed past him, the skirt of her nightgown brushing his legs. He trailed behind her, swallowing hard to force down the rising panic. Larry would be alright. He would be _ fine. _

“_Mom.” _ Sal actually flinched at the desperation in Larry’s voice as Lisa knelt down beside him. Lisa smoothed sweaty hair back from his face as Sal hovered behind her, unsure of how to help. “It _ hurts.” _

“Where does it hurt?” Lisa asked softly, her gaze already scanning the spot Larry was clutching at. He removed his hands from his stomach just long enough to point before whimpering in pain and grabbing at it again. 

Lisa turned her head, meeting Sal’s gaze. Her features were pale, but she looked determined despite her obvious concern. “Sal, I need you to dial 911. Tell them you need an ambulance, and give our address. Can you do that?”

Without hesitation, Sal nodded and then scurried out of the room to find the apartment’s phone. He could hear Lisa murmuring something to Larry as he left, but he didn’t stop to make sense of it. 

3

When Todd had knocked on his door with the news that Ash had ended up in the hospital, it was all Sal could do to keep himself from panicking on the spot. 

“She’s _ what?” _

“In the hospital,” Todd repeated. His voice was, as it usually was, matter-o-fact and crisp, but a note of panic just beneath the normal tone betrayed his concern. “Her mom called my mom, who told me. I thought I should pass the word along to you and Larry.”

“Is she okay?” Sal burst out with, almost cutting Todd off in his own panic. 

Todd nodded, reaching up to absentmindedly push his glasses up on his nose. “She’ll be fine. Her left arm is, as I understand it, broken in several places.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“I was not graced with the details, unfortunately.” Todd jerked a thumb towards the elevator. “Would you come with me to speak with Larry? I don’t have a keycard to get into the basement. After that, if the two of you aren’t busy, I was planning to walk over to the hospital and attempt to make a visitation. You and Larry are free to accompany me if you wish to.”

Sal took a slow, deep breath, then let it out. “Yeah. I think that’d be good. Let me grab my shoes, and I’ll come with you.”

Hospitals were definitely _ not _ on Sal’s top-ten list of places he liked to hang out at. In fact, if he had to make a list, it would’ve probably been on his top-ten list of _ least _ favourite places. Even though he’d never had a truly _ bad _experience at the Nockfell hospital, it was stark and white and full of doctors and nurses and beeping machinery, which made it too close to the hospital he’d stayed at after the… incident. He tried to avoid it when he could, even though —given his odd affinity for finding trouble— he’d been unfortunate enough to visit on more than one occasion since they’d moved to town. 

It was only an infinitesimal comfort that Sal wouldn’t be the one in the hospital bed, this time around. 

“Okay, I’m ready,” Sal said, newly-shoed, with his wallet tucked into his back pocket, just in case. Todd nodded, and they made their way into the elevator without any trouble. Sal slid his keycard into the slot, and the elevator creaked to life. 

Todd fidgeted anxiously with the hem of his shirt before pushing his glasses on his nose again, even though Sal couldn’t see a reason for it, since they hadn’t slid down any further on his face since the last time he’d done it. “I don’t like this,” he muttered after a moment. 

When Sal looked over to watch Todd properly instead of peering out of the corner of his eye at him, Todd had taken his glasses off and was rubbing the right lense furiously with the hem of his shirt. 

“Don’t like what?”

Todd held the glasses up to the too-dim light of the elevator. “Ashley being in the hospital.” He paused, squinting, and then resumed rubbing at the right lense with his shirt. “Logically, I have no reason to dislike it,” he continued, sounding more than a little put-out. “If we took a look at any kind of recent statistics, the chances of people having more problems in a hospital than at home are incredibly low. Ashley is in the best place for the types of injuries she has sustained.” Todd paused again, squinting up at his glasses once more. Apparently satisfied, he jammed them back on his face. “I believe that I’m just struggling with the fact that she _ had _to be hospitalised in the first place.”

The elevator dinged, and Sal gestured for Todd to exit through the door before following. “You’re anxious because she’s hurt?” he clarified, because he loved Todd to the moon and back, but sometimes, he had a habit of spinning around and around the same concept until he’d gone hoarse. 

Slowly, Todd nodded. “Affirmative.”

“If it helps, I am too,” Sal admitted, pulling a face beneath his prosthetic. “I know it’s the best thing for her and everything if she has a broken arm, but… I _ hate _hospitals.”

Todd’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t even think about that! Sal, you don’t have to come with me—“

“No, no,” Sal interrupted. “I want to! I want to go see Ash, I just…” He heaved a sigh and shook his head. “...wish she wasn’t in the hospital in the first place.”

Although he didn’t look entirely convinced, Todd let the subject drop and nodded. “As do I.”

Sal knocked on the door to Larry and Lisa’s apartment, and a few seconds later, Larry threw open the door and grinned at both of them. “Hey! I thought I heard you guys. What’s u—?”

“Ash is in the hospital,” Sal blurted out. 

Larry’s grin dropped. “_What?” _

“Ashley is in the hospital. Unfortunately, we don’t know what happened to her, but we are aware that she is there with a broken arm,” Todd clarified. Sal nodded along as he explained. “We’re going to walk over to visit her. We wanted to invite you along, if you wanted to come with us?”

Larry swept his hair out of his face, revealing more clearly that he’d paled considerably at the information he’d just been given. “Yeah, shit, of course. Let me let my mom know what’s going on— you guys wanna come in for a second?”

“Alright,” Todd agreed, following Larry into his apartment. Sal took a deep, steadying breath, shifting on his feet before letting himself be led inside as well. 

Larry disappeared into Lisa’s room, but the silence only stretched for about fifteen seconds before he came flying out of it again. 

“Let’s go.”

Sal nodded. His stomach was churning, a bitter queasiness creeping up on him with every moment they spent not on their way to Ash’s side. 

Todd led the way out, and Larry stepped into Sal’s space the second they’d left the apartment building. Their sides brushed together lightly, until cautious fingers brushed against the back of Sal’s in a silent question. 

Without hesitating, Sal pushed his fingers back against Larry’s until he could hold tightly to his hand. 

“Hey, Sally, you gonna be okay with the… you know…?”

“Yeah,” Sal replied, jaw set beneath his mask. “I’ll be fine. I just want to make sure that Ash is okay.” 

The way he was gripping Larry’s hand was an indicator that he _ wasn’t _as fine as he’d claimed, but Larry didn’t push the issue. Instead, he squeezed Sal’s hand and let him hang on until they caught up to Todd at an intersection and Sal let go once more. 

The receptionist at the hospital was a tall lady with a lot of freckles, cropped pink hair, and no eyebrows. She smiled tightly at the group when they walked into the waiting room. 

“Can I help you?”

Larry glanced nervously between the receptionist, Todd, and Sal. “Uh—“

“We’re here to visit Ashley Campbell, if she’s been cleared for such visitation,” Todd interrupted, though not unkindly. Larry shot him a grateful look. 

“Oh! Hm.” The receptionist opened up a binder in front of her and ran her finger down some kind of list. “Campbell… Cambell… Ah! Yes. Campbell comma Ashley. She’s in room 114, down the hall and take a right, about halfway down thataway.” She pointed with an index finger that wasn’t manicured —even though the rest of her fingers seemed to be— and offered another tight smile. “She had a few visitors earlier, but I believe I saw them leave, so the three of you are more than welcome to go on in.”

“Thank you!” Sal piped up with, already inching towards the hallway they’d been pointed to. 

The receptionist waved a hand vaguely, showing off that, yes, only her index finger was missing the long french nails her other fingers were sporting. “No problem, kiddos.” 

Sal smiled —albeit a bit tersely— beneath his prosthetic and grabbed at both Larry’s and Todd’s arms. “Come on, come on!”

“Sal, I’m coming!” Todd replied, stumbling in his own haste to rush down the hall. Larry merely pulled his arm until his hand was gripping Sal’s again as they all bumbled towards room 114.

Once they actually reached the door, though, Sal stopped abruptly, sending Larry crashing into him and Todd crashing into Larry. Pained noises sounded from all three of them, and they struggled to right themselves without further tangling together. 

“Sally Face?” Larry tried lightly, once they’d all regained their footing. “You okay, man?”

The smell of antiseptic, the sound of monitors beeping from rooms with their doors cracked open, the sight of the too-bright lights and the too-white walls… It all made Sal feel remarkably claustrophobic, and remarkably _ small. _He swallowed hard. “I’m fine.”

Larry squeezed his hand, and Todd reached around Larry to pat Sal on the shoulder. Tremulously, Sal took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It made a whistling noise through the mouth of his mask. 

“I’m fine,” he repeated, his voice slightly stronger. “Let’s go see Ash.” With that, Sal reached for the handle and turned it, slowly letting the door fall open to reveal Ash lying on a hospital bed in the middle of the room. Her left arm was in a plain, white cast, and raised, held up by a black strap hanging from a metal bar above the bed. Her face was pale; nevertheless, a tired grin blossomed over her features when she looked over and caught sight of the three boys in the doorway. 

“Took you long enough,” she said, and Sal charged into the room, dragging Larry with him by the hand. Todd followed and shut the door again behind them. 

“What happened to you?!” Larry demanded. 

Ash gave a semblance of a shrug, her right shoulder bobbing more than her left, her grin turning sheepish. “I fell out of a tree.”

Sal blinked at her, turning himself towards the light so that he knew she would be able to see his eyelids fluttering. “What?”

“Where did you find a tree both easy enough to climb and high enough for an injury of this caliber to occur?” Todd asked at the same time, trailing to the opposite side of Ash’s bed. 

To her credit, Ash continued to look properly chagrined. “Wendigo Lake. I just… felt like climbing a tree, so I got my parents to picnic out there, and… climbed. And then…” She nodded towards her suspended limb. “...fell.”

“_Ash.” _

“Don’t give me that look, Sally Face!” Ash stuck her tongue out at Sal, ignoring the plaintive look he was throwing at her. “I didn’t _ mean _to fall! It just happened.”

Larry reached out, taking a careful hold of Ash’s hand. She entwined her fingers with his, brushing her fingertips gently over his knuckles.

“That’s not— I’m just—“ Sal looked to Larry, to Todd, and then back at Ash, genuine desperation bleeding through. “You’re not supposed to get hurt!”

Ash’s features softened immediately. “Hey,” she murmured. Sal looked away. “Sal, I’m okay. It’s just a broken bone. I’ll heal.”

Slowly, Sal forced himself to take another breath. Todd moved away from the side of the bed briefly, in order to push the three chairs on the side of the room into better positions. He placed two behind Sal and Larry respectively, and dragged the third to the other side of the bed for himself. 

“I know,” Sal said softly at length. “I know. I just… don’t like seeing you guys getting hurt.”

Larry nudged Sal gently until he took a seat, and followed suit, both of them mirroring Todd, who’d already sat in his own seat across from them. Todd was examining Ash’s cast with no small amount of interest. 

Ash squeezed Larry’s hand before letting go and reaching for Sal, finding his free hand and taking it instead. “Sometimes, we’re gonna get hurt anyways,” she told him lightly. “But we’ll be okay. Okay?”

Sal tightened his hold on her hand. “Okay,” he agreed. He took another breath. “Okay.”

4

“This is actually the worst,” Ash groaned, dropping her forehead down against the notebook on the desk in front of her. 

Todd shook his head. “Come on, Ashley. It’s not that bad. It’s only quadratics.”

Ash snorted. “Yeah, that’s easy for you to say,” she muttered. Despite her frustration, she forced herself to sit back up, staring plaintively at Todd. “Are you _ sure _you won’t just do my homework for me?” she asked, batting her eyelashes. She didn’t bother to hide the smirk that began to form at Todd’s eyeroll in response; they’d gone through this song and dance since the very first time he’d tutored her. 

“You know we would be caught for plagiarism, and for cheating,” he lectured. His serious tone was belied by the way he raised a finger to wag it in her face. “It would be more trouble than it’s worth.”

Ash groaned. “Fine. We only have, like, twenty minutes left, anyways.” The two of them had forgone their usual lunchtime hangout with Sal and Larry to try and cram for their next math test, since Ash was notoriously awful at them and Todd had offered to assist her. “Think you can teach me this shit by fifth period?”

Todd shrugged. “Probably not,” he deadpanned, earning a slug to the arm for his efforts. They both glared at each other for a split second before breaking into laughter that was raucous enough to earn a glare from the librarian at the front desk.

“Oh, hey, Neil got me a box of chocolates,” Todd said excitedly as his laughter began to fade. “Would you like one?”

Ash grinned. “Ooh, chocolates from your boyfriend _ and _ eating in the library?” she teased, already reaching for the box Todd was tugging out of his backpack. “What a _ stud_.”

Todd pushed his glasses up on his nose and passed over the box. “I have my moments.”

With another uncontained snort of laughter, Ash slid the lid off the chocolate box. It wasn’t in the shape of a heart, like she’d half-expected; instead, it was a simple rectangle covered in waxy white paper. (Then again, she supposed it was fitting for Neil and Todd. Neither of them had ever really been the _ big romantic gestures _type.) 

“They’re all different types,” Todd explained, pointing to the small stack of empty wrappers in one corner of the box. “Neil called it a _ Mystery Box.” _He smiled just a touch dreamily, and Ash had to bite her cheek to keep from continuing to tease him about it. “He’s very thoughtful.”

Ash considered her options. “He is,” she agreed, selecting one of the chocolates after a moment of consideration. It was square-shaped and covered in chocolate sprinkles, which seemed like a great indicator of a good candy in her book. “Thanks for sharing.”

Todd plucked a little round chocolate out and popped it into his mouth without hesitation, wiping his fingers on his pants despite the fact that there wasn’t anything on them. He nodded in lieu of answering verbally and grinned closed-mouthed. Ash was glad for both; she liked candy as much as the next teenager, but she didn’t think she liked it enough to stare into Todd’s chocolate-covered mouth while he munched. 

“Okay, back to business,” she said with a dramatic sigh after biting her own chocolate in half and chewing and swallowing. It was filled with some sort of fruit filling, cherry or… strawberry? She wasn’t sure. Regardless, it tasted good, which was all that mattered. “The quadratic formula.” 

“The quadratic formula,” Todd repeated, absently scratching at his forearm with blunt fingernails. “I mentioned it before— you wrote it down?” 

Ash flipped through her notebook. “Uhh… Yeah!” She stopped flipping and pointed at a jumbled mess of letters and numbers that she felt personally offended by. (Letters weren’t supposed to be in math, damn it!) “a-x squared plus b-x plus c equals zero,” she recited. Todd coughed. “Gesundheit,” she added absently, eyes roving over her notes. “I get that part. A, b, and c are all just stand-ins for regular numbers, and x is just… x, which is technically a stand-in for more numbers, but it could be a stand in for _ any _number.” She made a face at the page. “I hate math.”

“Ashley,” Todd said, his voice strained. Ash frowned. 

“I know, I know. It’s easy for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for m—“ Ash finally glanced up. Her eyes went wide as she trailed off, taking in the sight of the suddenly-panicked look on Todd’s face. “Are you okay?” 

“Having a… hard time breathing,” Todd managed to reply in what Ash could only think of as a croak. “I think… allergic?” 

“Neil knows you have allergies, doesn’t he?” Ash asked, a desperate edge to her own voice. She dove down onto the ground, reaching for Todd’s backpack. “You have your epi-pen?” 

Todd’s hands were trembling as he tried to reach for her to help. Ash took that as a _ yes _and pulled the larger pocket of the backpack open, rifling through the neatly-sorted notebooks frantically before pulling the zip on the front pouch. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m looking—“ Ash mumbled, unceremoniously shoving pens and pencils out of the bag. After what felt like an eternity, her hand closed around the unmistakable body of Todd’s epi-pen, and she tugged it out quickly, silently willing her own hands to stay steady. 

Todd was obviously struggling to breathe properly, his chest heaving in small bursts in an attempt to get oxygen flowing. From the front desk, the librarian’s gaze stopped on them and creased in concern. Ash couldn’t focus on her. 

Instead, she ripped the cap off of the epi-pen and placed one of her hands on Todd’s thigh. “I’m so glad you made us all practice this,” she added in that same almost-hysterical, desperate mutter. Todd didn’t reply —she hadn’t expected him to— and she didn’t wait for any kind of response before jamming the needle into his leg. He jerked a little against her hand, but didn’t otherwise respond. 

“What’s going on?” The librarian asked from behind Todd. Ash hadn’t even seen her move. She startled, but her hands stayed firmly placed where they were. 

“He’s having an allergic reaction,” Ash explained, her own voice strange in her ears. “He needs help, I used his epi-pen, but—“

“I’ll call an ambulance and the nurse,” the librarian interrupted, stalking away back towards the desk. Ash stared after her desperately before looking back to Todd, watching him draw in a trembling breath. 

+1

“No, I am absolutely serious,” Todd said, ignoring the way Ash was staring at him like he’d grown a second head. “I really think we should investigate.” 

Sal made a scrunched-up face that everyone could see. His prosthetic sat on Larry’s dresser, where it had been since they’d all piled into his room hours ago to discuss their latest ghost-hunting escapades. 

“As much as I want to check it out, Todd, I just…” Sal huffed out a sigh, his nose wrinkling further. “I _ really _don’t want to be in a hospital if I don't absolutely have to be.”

Larry looked up at Sal from where his head was resting (which was, comfortably, against Sal’s thigh) and then let his head flop to the side to look at Todd. Todd stared right back at him, widening his eyes beneath his glasses to give as effective as a puppy-dog stare as he possibly could. 

Larry groaned. 

“Awh, Sal, he’s pouting,” Larry whined, looking back to Sal. Todd bit his lip to keep from breaking and turned his puppy-dog face on Ash, who covered her own face with her hands. 

“Oooh, no, you’re not getting that to work on me today!” she crowed, shifting her hands so that one was covering her eyes. She reached out blindly with the other, poking around until she found Todd’s face. She squished his cheek with her fingers until he finally laughed and batted her hand away. 

Sal dropped his own hand off the bed until he found Ash’s hand, deftly twining his fingers with hers and successfully getting her away from Todd’s poor face. “You were high on epinephrine when you saw her, Todd. Not that I don’t think there are ghosts in the hospital! I just—“

“I don’t think that’s how epinephrine works,” Larry interrupted. “You know you’d be okay, Sally Face. We’ll all be there with you.”

Ash squeezed Sal’s hand. “I think you’re all crazy,” she said, fondness colouring her tone. “But I’ll go with you anyways, if you _ really _want to go hunt hospital ghosts.”

“We wouldn’t be hunting for _ ghosts, _plural,” Todd pointed out fairly. “We’d be hunting for _ one _ ghost. Singular.”

“The _ lady in the yellow dress_,” Larry recited dramatically, quoting Todd’s original explanation of the ghost he’d seen the last time he’d been in the hospital. “I’m just jealous that you got to see her and I didn’t, man. She sounds hot.”

Sal snorted. Ash used the hand Sal was holding to smack Larry in the knee. 

“Ow?” Sal raised one of his eyebrows towards Ash. 

Ash grinned unapologetically. “Oops.”

“I really think it would be a good experience for the four of us,” Todd pressed, easily steering them back to the debate at hand. “We know many of the ghosts here in Addison Apartments, but perhaps the ghosts in another location may have more answers to our questions. If we don’t seek them out, we may never know the truth about the secrets that lie behind the mysteries here in Nockfell.”

There was silence for a moment as Todd’s words sunk in, and then Larry wiggled his shoulders in an awkward semblance of a shrug. “I’m in.”

“I’m in, even if I think you’re all batshit,” Ash agreed. She poked the back of Sal’s hand with her thumb. “What about you, Sally Face?”

Sal took a good look around, his gaze lingering on Larry’s face, Ash’s face, and then Todd’s face respectively. Finally, he groaned. “Oh, fine. I’m in, too. But if anyone comes our way with a scalpel, you all are on your own.”

Larry snorted. “Fair enough.”

“Tomorrow, then?” Todd prompted, a wide grin on his face. 

Sal heaved a sigh and flopped backwards, jostling Larry just enough to make him grumble under his breath and readjust so that he was once again cuddled comfortably against Sal’s leg. “Yeah, tomorrow works for me.”

“_Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow,” _Ash sang, laughing when Sal tugged his hand away from her and flicked her in the side of the head instead. “Oh, don’t be like that, Sally Face. You know I love you.” She caught his hand once more and pressed a dramatic, wet kiss to the back of it. 

“Gross,” Sal muttered, but he didn’t pull his hand away. 

Todd jumped up, beginning to pace. They’d all gotten used to it, the restless energy that he sometimes had to release that otherwise got pent up inside of him. “I have several theories about the lady in the yellow dress,” he said excitedly. Sal, Ash, and Larry all exchanged vaguely amused-yet-fond looks as Todd continued, and they settled in a little more against one another as he gave them every idea he’d come up with since he’d seen her in the hospital those few weeks prior. 

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: the lady in a yellow dress is a reference to a semi-famous ghost in my town. She haunts an old asylum around here and asks people to help her find her children, but she disappears if anyone tries to help her. 
> 
> Kudos/comments are love! Come scream at me on tumblr @deathishauntedbyhumans!


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